A Strange Tale from Finland

And, actu­ally, writ­ten by a Nor­we­gian, Roy Jac­ob­sen.  It’s a novel called, in Eng­lish trans­la­tion, “The Burnt-Out Town of Mir­acles” set in WWII in the Finnish Winter, when the inhab­it­ants of a small town set fire to it and leave, to pre­vent the invad­ing Rus­si­ans from using it as a base.  The hero is a faux-simple man who stays on, col­lects together the rag-tag of rejects and hope­less cases from the Rus­sian Army to form a group of log­gers — and together they sur­vive the bit­ter weather and the Finnish vic­tory over the Rus­si­ans.  It has an alleg­or­ical feel — must read it again.  Roy Jac­ob­sen is wery well known and respec­ted in Nor­way, I’m told. It’s a great pity this is his only book in trans­la­tion.  Bits of it reminded me of Hamsun’s simple farmer char­ac­ters in“The growth of the Soil”.